Chocolate's good for the heart, chocolate's good for the brain ... and now chocolate is good for stroke risk?

A new study in the journal Neurology shows that chocolate consumption is linked with a decreased risk of stroke in men.

"The beneficial effect of chocolate consumption on stroke may be related to the flavonoids in chocolate. Flavonoids appear to be protective against cardiovascular disease through antioxidant, anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory properties," study researcher Susanna C. Larsson, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institute, said in a statement. "It's also possible that flavonoids in chocolate may decrease blood concentrations of bad cholesterol and reduce blood pressure."

The new study included 37,103 men from Sweden, who were between ages 49 and 75. They filled out questionnaires detailing the frequency with which they ate certain foods, including chocolate.

Then, the researchers followed up with them 10 years later, and found that 1,995 of the study participants had suffered a stroke.

It seems that every "fact" we hear about a good diet is sooner or later contradicted, i.e. chocolate is bad for you, chocolate is good for you. Coffee is bad for you; coffee is good for you, etc. -- then we get a pithy little message about "not overdoing it."
You would think that with a science that can land men on the moon and now driving nuclear powered science labs around Mars that we could come to some conclusions about eating...an activity we've been doing since the dawn of time. But all we get is Too Much Information, or Contradictory Information, Competing Information, Information prejudiced by Business Interest, or Distracting Information...and a pithy little message about "not overdoing it." It's like our politics, and it's helping to poison us -- Avoiding extremes, of course, not a bad idea; and some amount of exercise absolutely necessary; simple enough, isn't it?